April Madness Halo Wars Tournament (of destruction) Destructed
It always sucks to start off with bad news, but better to give it to you straight. I’m sorry to say that the April Madness Tournament (of destruction) has been postponed, probably until later in the development schedule. I know you were all set to cheer for “Team Who is Chris Stark” and “Team Swanges”, so this is going to come as a major disappointment to you. We have some really cool stuff that will soon be added to the game so we’re going to hold off for now. It only makes sense to have a tournament (of destruction) when we can unleash the game’s full arsenal upon each other right?
As it was, our practice rounds were a lot of fun and teams were using somewhat different strategies which is encouraging. Scorpion tanks were proving to be very strong in the build we were using, mostly due to a bug with an anti-vehicle unit doing less damage than it was supposed to. Air units were also pretty popular, but because of their fantastic hit and run capabilities that could cripple a player’s Command Center, their power has been nerfed somewhat. A small group of these units was able to destroy a key building or two in a poorly defended base and then flee. It’s a good strategy that should be viable, but it was just a little too effective.
Of the strategies that I had been trying I had two that were working out pretty well for me. The first was a delayed rush with infantry. The real strength of this strategy is that it was generally unexpected, unless my opponent(s) were scouting well, because Scorpions were so popular. It takes time to get Scorpions on the field though, and infantry are relatively easy to start training. I’d concentrate on Marines but hold them back and try to time it so that they’d attack while my enemy was happily booming towards Scorpions or whatnot. By holding them back I make sure that I’ve got enough units to really do some damage when I do attack, and if all goes well the other team will hopefully be lulled into thinking that I’m busy booming my economy like they are. I want my opponent to invest in a long term strategy instead of defenses.
I’d have to be doing a good job of scouting so I’d know when to attack. Attack too late and he’s got high end units that will be tough for my infantry to take out, too early and he might be able to recover and fend me off if I don’t have enough units. When my infantry arrive at his base I’d try and kill a key structure, like a Supply Pad or Vehicle Depot, while continuing to stream in more reinforcements and booming in my unmolested part of the map. There’s a little more to the attack than I can safely say, generally revolving around an ability that Marines have, but that’s the gist of it.
I think the real reason I had success with this strategy was the popularity of Scorpions, which take a solid investment of time and resources to field. It was generally a safe bet that’s exactly what the other side was doing, so I could get away with this. When I failed with this strategy it was a glorious fiery end to a short game. Failure usually meant that I was behind economically and would soon get rolled unless my ally carried me on his/her back.
The other strategy that I used is growing in popularity, as it’s a pretty obvious counter to a Scorpion heavy force. I’ll have to leave that for a later time as it makes use of a new unit that I can’t mention.
Halo Wars Alpha
Yup, as you may have seen mentioned on a couple of sites, we are doing an alpha test with some internal Microsoft folks. I’m afraid I can’t talk about it at this time.
